tahoe snow (tree story #95)

Sunny, clear, warm, snow on the ground but no jackets required. Decided to take a day trip up to Tahoe - try to get a bit of snow in before it’s all gone. So little has fallen this year, there’s only about sixty percent of normal snow pack. And now it’s forecast to be quite warm this next full week. Highs in the valley are supposed to be nearly eighty today - Tahoe is predicted to be low sixty’s - certainly feels spring like. We’ve brought all our cold weather gear - all we really need are boots for tromping in the snow...

Just north of McKinney Bay - I have to climb up on top of the snow drift - occasionally stepping into knee deep snow - coming back toward the car I see the snow comes nearly to the edge of the lake. Getting there I step through a few more times, a little worried that I could catch my leg between rocks along the shoreline -

Judith Monroe, Wanderings journal

remembering (tree story #140)

A break in the recent storms has given me a great desire to get out. I’ve come to this park, next to where they’re building the new high school and find the high school grounds are taking more of the park than I expected. It’s a small blow to my heart. The “tree along the fence” is gone, as is the old fence; it makes me a little sad but bittersweet that I caught it on film while I could.

The ground is wet but not too soggy, covered in short green grass sprouts and fallen oak leaves. I wander around the park and find a well worn foot path dead-ends at a chain link construction fence. New taller fences, looking appropriate for sports courts, are just beyond.

Many of my favorite trees are still here though - I’m also looking to see how they all weathered the recent sixty-five-mile-per-hour winds, so I’m enjoying my old friends for as long as I can. A small flock of doves roosts in the top of the “woodpecker oak” and a few magpies at the top of another. I photograph one of the old heritage oaks that I had called “oak near Palmerson Drive” and one of the “s curve oaks,” reminding me of my kids playing here when they were little. Lots of tiny little finches flit around branches, twittering and calling out to each other, much like the little children in my memory.

Judith Monroe, Wanderings journal

longing for the wind's embrace (tree story #139)

Proud and strong they stand
with roots spreading across the land
reaching for the sky they are
to be viewed like beacons from afar
yearning for the sun’s caress
to shine upon their wooden dress
longing for the wind’s embrace
to bring out their ancient grace
proud and strong they stand
but will they survive the greed of man?

Magnus Holmgren

wild & cultivated (tree story #138)

When she was little she used to draw trees. It was natural. The earth was a healing ground for finding her core of peace and inside this core the voice of God. Through the years her tree drawings would come and go, become modern and jagged branches or watercolored maps of the woods. It was natural. The imagery of the tree always drew her inward again and then outward to feel the simple joy of nature and the gifts of life so evident in the colors and textures of the many trees found in the forest, local parks, and the hills of California.

Trees, wild or cultivated, ancient or sweet seedlings in a row, spoke to her and, when she couldn’t laugh at home, the trees would help her find that personal sense of freedom again. Life is packed with challenges and pain along with indescribable joy and walking a path lined with trees or touching fingertips to bark or gazing at the amazing patterns in leaves was a way to find that joy again when it was lost in the hardships. Trees hold fast, stand tall, and offer protection from the burn of a hammering sun. Trees reach up and out while staying rooted like sentinels. They remind her of the strength to be found deep inside even when weakness wants to rule. They remind her of the need for balance in being strong but also receptive, keeping arms wide to the higher power like the tree welcomes the sky in order to survive.

When she grew old she would draw trees now and then between carrying a camera out for a daily walk of capturing images of another tree or field or wild flower dancing in the wind. She grew old with trees as her friend and forever thinks of trees as inspiration and a gift from God that keeps her sane when the world seems not. Trees forever reach until the end and so she goes on, reaching, lifting face and heart to heaven in surety that she is rooted deeply as a loved child loving the magic of God’s creation … even when the clouds darken and rain comes she can sense the Son rising in her heart to nurture her with everlasting life.

Susan Raines

with eager hope (tree story #108)

Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later. For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are. Against its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse. But with eager hope, the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay. For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us. We were given this hope when we were saved. (If we already have something, we don’t need to hope for it. But if we look forward to something we don’t yet have, we must wait patiently and confidently.)

Romans 8:18-25

still singing (tree story #97)

10 a.m. sunny, warm & clear. Songbirds singing, kids playing, voices echo in the quiet hills. No sign of life on the vines yet, grass & other little plants green up the ground. I wander around a bit and see about a half dozen mule deer carefully work their way along the west edge of the vineyards in the bordering oak woods where the light will be better later...

6 p.m. Light clouds coming in - little less intense light than last evening - cooling just a little, songbirds are still singing. Clouds shift, the earth moves around the sun, the light shifts and changes. Vineyard to the southwest, framed by trees and a stone wall.

Judith Monroe, Wanderings journal

cast and reel (tree story #63)

I love the natural light
hitting the rolls of
the carelessly placed lake
as I cast and reel
and cast again.

And I’m sitting beneath
the netted branches of a tree
as it casts its immense limbs
out against me, reeling
me in closer and I move
ecstatic like a flopping fish
hooked by the natural light.

Kevin Eagan

things we cannot see (tree story # 43)

Though our bodies are dying, our spirits are being renewed everyday. For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever.

2 Corinthians 4: 16-18

castle in they sky (tree story #42)

The little girl tugs on the man's sleeve and, with longing in her eyes pleads, "Please Daddy? Will you build me a tree house? I can go there to have tea parties with my dolls. And how fun to peek down on the tiny people on the ground!"

The man contemplates the tree as if through his daughter's eyes. What is childhood without a tree house? Could he ever live up to his title of “Daddy” if he were to push this request aside? Did he not ache for the same thing when he grew up in a suburban home that offered no hope of a castle in the sky?

Of course he will do it. The weekend is free to get started right away. Lumber is purchased, designs drawn, dad and daughter excited at the thought of seeing it built. The floor first. Maybe a roof next, but plan to protect the growing branches that burst forth from the rafters. And walls are a must. Those teacups need shelves to store them, and windows with lace curtains to waft in the breeze.

The little girl moves in right away, happy with just a floor. Her dolls can imagine the rest. Walls? Who needs walls when the sun offers the warmth and security that those very walls would block? Spring blossoms peek in the windows that do not even exist. She is content.

The pleasant seasons offer hours of escape in her tree house. Daddy visits, but the excitement of the building process is dampened by other duties, other projects, maybe another day?

Fall turns to winter. The leaves vacate the tree, as does the little girl.

Maybe next spring will be time enough to get to those important details: roof, walls, a rope to climb.

Then again, the little girl is growing. Tea parties and dolls may be stored away and replaced with more young womanly things. Maybe a tree house with no walls will offer her the freedom to grow without boxing her in.

Lisa Van Aken

jacob's ladder (tree story #39)

Meanwhile, Jacob left Beersheba and traveled toward Haran. At sundown he arrived at a good place to set up camp and stopped there for the night. Jacob found a stone to rest his head against and lay down to sleep. As he slept, he dreamed of a stairway that reached from the earth up to heaven. And he saw the angels of God going up and down the stairway.

At the top of the stairway stood the Lord, and he said, “I am the Lord, the God of your grandfather Abraham, and the God of your father, Isaac. The ground you are lying on belongs to you. I am giving it to you and your descendants. Your descendants will be as numerous as the dust of the earth! They will spread out in all directions—to the west and the east, to the north and the south. And all the families of the earth will be blessed through you and your descendants. What’s more, I am with you, and I will protect you wherever you go. One day I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have finished giving you everything I have promised you.”

Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I wasn’t even aware of it!” But he was also afraid and said, “What an awesome place this is! It is none other than the house of God, the very gateway to heaven!”

The next morning Jacob got up very early. He took the stone he had rested his head against, and he set it upright as a memorial pillar. Then he poured olive oil over it. He named that place Bethel (which means “house of God”), although the name of the nearby village was Luz.

Then Jacob made this vow: “If God will indeed be with me and protect me on this journey, and if he will provide me with food and clothing, and if I return safely to my father’s home, then the Lord will certainly be my God. And this memorial pillar I have set up will become a place for worshiping God, and I will present to God a tenth of everything he gives me.”

Genesis 28:10-22

heaven (tree story #25)

“If a blind man momentarily gained his sight and described an actual tree that he saw, other blind people - especially if they lived in a world where everyone was blind - might automatically assume the tree was nonliteral, a mere symbol of spiritual reality. But they would be wrong. Likewise, we should not assume that the Bible describes Heaven in physical ways merely to accommodate us. It is fully possible that the present Heaven is a physical realm.”

Randy Alcorn, Heaven

endless battle (tree story #141)

Still it stands, the tree of life
holding its ground
struggling to survive the endless battle.

Still it comes, the mist of death
unleashing its powers
trying to win the endless battle.

Still there is, an equilibrium
balancing the scales
making sure there is an endless battle.

Still I wonder, could someone win
life or death, growth or decay
bringing an end to the endless battle.

Magnus Holmgren

beckoning path (tree story #22)

The weather has changed a lot these past two weeks - rains have come and gone and the creek is higher now. The plants and lower banks look as if they have been flooded lately, no doubts the waters rose during the storm. A couple small brown sparrow-type birds twit and hop among a pile of cut branches across the creek. I go a little farther away from the road, the sound of running water competes with the traffic noise. A crow passes overhead, calling out.

A couple smaller birds chit chit chit in the branches of trees while the beep beep beep of heavy construction calls out as well. Poking up from the dry horizontal straws rise a carpet of fat green short blades - rain here means green. I stop to make a photograph and I hear rustling noises in the tall dead growth next to the path I’m on. I’d love to look farther but my time is up...

Judith Monroe, Wanderings journal